gooeyduq

Taking long overdue honeymoon at Biras Creek in late Jan for a week, but having trouble figuring out how to actually get there from the NYC area. We have option of flying into Tortola/EIS or St. Thomas. Latter option on average several hundred dollars cheaper per person than former option. The NY-Tortola flights are all complicated requiring ridiculously short transfers through San Juan AND multiple connections (3!) on return trips. With the way flights are nowadays and the time of year don't want to risk flight delays, missing transfers, etc.

I corresponded briefly with the resort and I get the feeling it's trying to steer me towards flying into EIS, saying that to take a ferry from St. Thomas to Road Town would take us roughly 2 hours and cost us a total of about $200 with all the ferry transfers and taxis. Plus I'm still not clear on whether Biras would pick us up from the Road Town docks or if we would have to make our own way to some other docks to meet their private boat.

Then I looked into non-Air Sunshine charter flights from STT to Tortola and they are very expensive.

Anyone have any suggestions, experience with this?

RoamsAround

Getting to Virgin Gorda (and by extension Biras Creek) is not easy or inexpensive.

Flying into Tortola is probably going to be your best option unless you are willing to take a private charter. You might try posing your question on the BVI forum at Traveltalonline - lots of BVI experts there to advise you. The problem stems from the fact that VG's airport does not support commercial flights and that's limits your flight options.

Yes, taking the ferry from St. Thomas is a long circuitous route that won't save you very much money and because of the distance will take around 2 hours of your time.

gooeyduq

Thanks for the response--think we will fly into Tortola somehow. I found reasonable fares/itineraries at the American Express travel website (we've used them before--surprisingly good fares, even just on airfare alone and reliable customer service).

Tubulus

We just got back from Biras - I would definitely try and fly through Tortola. We flew that way coming down and took the ferry to St Thomas coming back. If you can get on 630am american flight out of jfk to san juan I wouldn't worry much about the short connection. The airport is tiny and I would think early am you should be ok with getting out of jfk on time. In fact our flight landed 45 minutes early. Also, I would guess (though who knows anymore) that a lot of people on the SJU-EIS flight are coming off the JFK-SJU flight, so they might hold it.

The ferry ride was fine, but it ended up a little delayed and docking/customs took a while, so you need to leave plenty of time. If you fly home during the week, your flight out of STT will be around 3pm but you'll have to take the 10am ferry. We finally got to STT airport at about 12:30. On weekends there is a noon ferry, but I would be wary of leaving that late given our experience. You also have to go through customs at the ferry dock and at the airport. All the STT flights leave around the same time, so lines can be long. The one big plus to the ferry is that you don't have to go through customs in NYC, which as you know can be quite horrible.

So in a long summary, if you can get a reasonable connection to Tortola, do that. For us, all of our options on the return had a 4 hour connection in San Juan and were more expensive, so the ferry was the best of 2 not great options.

(BTW Biras is amazing, have fun!)

doug_stallings

I'd also recommend flying into Tortola because if you fly into St. Thomas you will almost certainly have to spend at least one night there either coming or going, depending on your days of travel. Ultimately, you'll probably end up spending the same amount of money.

I believe that Biras will pick you up from Tortola (perhaps only at Beef Island) but will still charge you. Regardless of which way you go, it's an expensive and time-consuming trip requiring multiple connections to planes and/or ferries. That just can't be helped unless you arrange for a private transfer from St. Thomas, but that's many hundreds of dollars.

Either way (ferry or no ferry) you won't have to go through immigration and customs in NYC. You'll either do it in St. Thomas if you fly through there, or you'll do it in San Juan if you are flying from Tortola. Flights to and from both San Juan and the USVI are considered and treated as domestic flights (which is why you can fly to St. Thomas from LGA in NYC, which doesn't have immigration facilities).

doug_stallings

FYI: You can fly into Virgin Gorda on a charter. It would probably be worth looking into the costs of flying there from either St. Thomas or San Juan. Air Sunshine flies from both San Juan and St. Thomas, so that's worth exploring. And I believe that Seaborne still flies from St. Thomas to the North Sound (it's a seaplane). That might also be worth exploring. Again, however, none of these options is cheap.

turtlegirl

We're going to Biras Creek in early January from BOS. After looking at all the options, we're flying into and out of STT because they are both inexpensive non-stop flights. Getting to BC, we're taking Speedy's 4 pm ferry from St. Thomas (we land at STT at 2:35 so 4 pm works great) This ferry goes directly to VG and does not stop at Tortola so it should take around an hour and a half. Taxis are needed from STT airport to ferry $6 pp and ferry is $40 pp. Taxi also needed from ferry stop on VG to Gun Creek where Biras boat will pick us up. On our return we are taking Air Sunshine from EIS to STT-the Biras boat will bring us to EIS and then 3:50 pm plane from STT to BOS. I didn't want to take the early VG ferry which stops in Road Town back to STT for a late afternoon flight, which is why we're flying Air Sun. The EIS flights that I found were too expensive with 2 plus connections back to BOS. I sure hope Biras Creek is worth it!